


We Must Not Look At Goblin Men (We Must Not Eat Their Fruits)

by PoliticallyObsessedScholar



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Horror, M/M, The Old Blood Runs True, canon typical trigger warnings, minor canon deviation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 21:38:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10727760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoliticallyObsessedScholar/pseuds/PoliticallyObsessedScholar
Summary: Eric Bittle grew up being taught to ignore the Call. He doesn't feel like doing that anymore.





	We Must Not Look At Goblin Men (We Must Not Eat Their Fruits)

When Eric was five years old his Moomaw looked at him with a strange gleam in her eyes. He knew why, he'd been playing with the dolls again - Coach didn't like it when he played with dolls. He stayed at her house that weekend, it was an enlightening few days on a number of accounts. The rest of the Phelps-Bittle clan thought it was the weekend he was first allowed to bake (and it was) but it was also the first weekend of many that Eric Bittle learned about Control.

"We're not completely human, dear" Moomaw said as she rolled the dough out with a touch too much force "I know it's not the done thing to speak of it in these parts but Lord knows they weren't the only things the Lord created"

Berry juice was rolling down her arms, trickling through her fingers, dripping onto the counter. It sparkled in the sunlight, Eric was entranced. 

"It just means we need different outlets, dear, because you must control it, the Call. We aren't completely human but there's just enough of them in us. We must never, ever, hurt them"

When Eric was five years old, he joined his Moomaw with baking. It didn't work for him like it worked for her but he loved it just the same.

When Eric was seven years old, he started cutting into ice. Pushing himself forwards, propelling himself upwards with a giddy laugh, feeling the cold in his bones and revelling in it. Judges called him ethereal, spoke of his other-worldly presence, and said he'd go far. 

When Eric was sixteen years old, the football team locked him in a utility closet overnight. It was just  _such_ a shame they'd accidentally locked themselves inside with him. Jack Dawson had always smiled so bright, so cocksure, and he still did but it was emptier and it seemed like he followed more than he led. Richard Evans used to push kids into lockers, he stopped doing that; he said he'd seen the light and it was so bright and blinding. If his voice cracked slightly and his eyes looked wild when he spoke about receiving the Lord's instruction, well He did work in mysterious ways. Timothy Jenkins strutted the halls but once when he saw Eric round a corner, he flinched so violently that he dropped everything in his hands. Eric had stopped in front of him, smiled sweetly and bent to help, he'd always hated when he'd been startled like that he said. Afterwards, it almost looked like Timothy Jenkins ran away. 

While the rest of the Bittle family rejoiced that the bullying had finally stopped, Moomaw took Eric aside. The figure skating wasn't working, she said, it unlocked rather than hid. She told him to try Hockey instead. He'd still be on the ice, satisfy the ache and gain the relief of what she'd come to believe was his Element as much as hers was the earth. Except he'd have teammates on a Hockey team, his skill would be there but he'd be around humans too. No checking though, she said as she looked him dead in the eyes and he quailed slightly, he had enough violence in him already.

When Eric was eighteen years old, he went to College. His Moomaw couldn't know it but that was the beginning of the end. Emily Augusta Bittle had tried so hard - since she first saw her grandson line up toy dolls for execution - it was just a pity that it wasn't enough.

Eric loved Samwell. He loved the rainbow stickers placed carefully in the corners of cafe windows. He loved the oven in the Haus, which sometimes needed just a spot of his fingers to keep working. He loved the ice which whispered to him constantly about all those students who'd skated on it before. It was how he knew about the Frog that'd gotten a severe case of hypothermia during Hazeapalooza in 1980. It was how he knew about the meeting the Seniors had, when Jack was a Freshman, to get his "privileged, druggie, ass off our ice." It was how he knew that Jack had heard and, instead of folding to the anxiety that welled up inside him, he'd decided to outwit them. 

Eric loved that when he came out to Shitty he thanked him. Eric loved that when he came out to Ransom and Holster they decided to set him up with his preferred gender without missing a beat. Eric loved that he didn't have to hide that part of himself anymore.

His Moomaw told him that part of the Call was the urge to Claim, to mark people and places as  _theirs_. Once Claimed, she said, no other would feel completely comfortable in that space. Everyone would know that they were protected and owned. If someone hurt or damaged something Claimed, the Call would not rest until they had extracted Vengeance.

It was an inhuman code of justice she said, pouring out a teaspoon of laxative into an apple pie she was baking for the Dawsons' housewarming, and it was safer not to Claim. "It makes resisting the rest of the Call  _very difficult_." she said as she put the pie into oven and nodded decisively.

At the time, Eric had thought that the fact his Moomaw was talking from experience meant he should listen. The longer he stayed at Samwell, the more the Haus buried deep into his soul and became more of a home than Georgia, the more Eric thought it was an impossible task. Why should he refuse to Claim those he loved? Why should he refuse to Claim and protect Shitty with his passionate speeches and bright, effervescent smile? Why should he refuse to Claim and shelter Jack with his quiet humour and steady soul, his flashes of violence that so mirrored his own? Why should he refuse to Claim and nurture Ransom and Holster, when Lord knew they couldn't quite do it on their own? Why should he refuse to Claim and support Lardo, who held up everyone but herself? 

When Johnson gave him his Dibs, said that it had been his as soon as he decided to Claim the team, Eric gave in to what he'd really known for months. By the time the team returned in his Sophomore year, he'd already started to make the Haus his own. 

Maybe that would have been fine if he hadn't wanted to Claim Jack. There were so many people who wanted to hurt him. Even before he joined the NHL there were the people who mailed him nasty letters, the people who pointedly talked about drug overdoses around him, the commentators looking for an easy target. Jack Zimmermann was the Lindsay Lohan of sports, a media darling turned international hunting game. 

The problem was Kent Parson. Kent Parson, whose vicious tongue couldn't be cured with a container of cookies baked with an extra dollop of love. Kent Parson, who rode so high, who smelled of lightning and the storm, who walked into a place that was Claimed and broke what was wanted.

The only reason he didn't follow Kent out into the dark, call on the ice in his veins and extract as much Vengeance as he could, was the fluttering remains of Kent's own Claim. They had been mere wisps on Jack when he'd met him. Barely there, old and faded. As if the love which had been poured into them, the ownership and possession, had ceased to be. Even with the pathetic dregs of a Claim like that, Eric couldn't touch him. He had no right to any Vengeance. Not that that was too much of a problem - when Jack returned to the Haus after break, there was no competing Claim on him. In the privacy of his mind, Eric grinned bright and victorious, then placed his own.

They started dating and Eric never knew he could feel so wild, so completely free and unhinged, and so powerful. He had to be, to protect Jack. He hoped it was enough, anyway. He'd brought Jack down for the Fourth of July and Moomaw had looked at him and smiled. Bless her heart, she thought that loving a human like Jack would have kept Eric away from the Call. 

Eric was falling apart at the seams while Jack was so far away, so difficult for him to reach and protect. He couldn't tell anyone that Jack was his either and the same voice that he knew whispered to Kent started to whisper to him. If Jack wouldn't let him own him, wouldn't accept the Claim, then he shouldn't let him stay upright. He should break and burn and feel the pain he was carving into Eric's very core. He should feel his beating heart exposed and ripped in front of his eyes, he should - 

Well, Eric didn't sleep very well until he called Jack one night in desperation and showed him his pain. Being able to tell at least some people helped, it eased the pressure building in his mind.

Then Kent Parson met Jack on the ice and his new Claim was immediately obvious. He must have thought it was someone on the Falconers that had Claimed him. Eric's Claim smelled unmistakably like ice, after all, and he'd barely registered in Kent's frame at Epikegster. Kent lashed out, he played rough and dirty, and it was only luck that got him through the game without hurting Jack.

(Later, much later, after he saw Eric standing dazzlingly at Jack's side - unmistakably the one of Them who'd given in to the Call, who'd been crowned with unearthly power, who commanded their allegiance and fear - Kent started having nightmares about that game. Nightmares, about how close he'd come to a vicious and violent death. He'd crawled into bed next to Swoops and clutched him tight, whispering his truth into his human lover's ear. The next time they saw Eric, Kent nodded at him slow enough to be a barely perceptible bow.)

That game pushed Eric to the brink. Nearly pushed him to accept that he wasn't human, that he could never  _be_ human. Nearly pushed him to accept that the closest humans had to getting anything right was when they understood the weregild and falling on swords was _de riguer_. Nearly pushed him to accept that confining themselves to human rules made those in which the Old Blood Ran True weak.

What pushed him to accept the Call wasn't that game, it wasn't even Jack at all. It was Dex.

Dex, who showed up at the Haus over summer vacation, when only Eric was there. Dex, who was crying, and crying, and crying. Dex, who didn't calm down even when Eric pushed a cup of lemon tea into one hand and a slice of blueberry pie into the other. Dex, who spoke in a broken voice about his family finding out what he'd hidden even from himself. Dex, who spoke about a phonecall from his mother, saying she knew and they had to talk. Dex, who tapped his scuffed shoe on the ground and whispered that the talk hadn't gone well. 

Dex, who said that even though they never kicked him out, he couldn't stay. Dex, who spoke about his family suddenly talking about perhaps not being able to afford to pay for the upkeep of his car but they could the week before. Dex, who talked about pamphlets and books about conversion therapy and resisting sinful urges. Dex, who had snuck out of the house while everyone else had gone to Church and caught a Greyhound down to Samwell. Dex, who had fit everything he could into a couple of bags and had come to sleep on the Green-Couch-That-Should-Perish-In-Fire-And-Be-Forevermore-Banished. 

Dex, who Eric had Claimed the very first time he fixed something in the Haus, had rocked back on his feet, and hid a small, pleased smile before he thought anyone could see. 

It was after Dex was settled on a pullout mattress in Eric's room, after Eric promised him everything would work out, that he accepted the Call.

Dex woke in the morning to discover that his parents had died unexpectedly when a tree fell across the road they were driving on. It was a closed casket funeral though, the accident had happened at night and sadly there had been some wild animals in the vicinity. At the funeral Dex heard whispers that their bodies had been so badly mutilated they'd had to be identified with dental records. Six weeks later, his cousin died after slipping off the lobster boat, getting tangled in netting, and being dragged behind the boat unnoticed. Unfortunately he'd knocked his head in the fall and they assumed his blood attracted sharks. Seven weeks after that the boat exploded, taking the rest of that side of the family with them. Dex's eleven year old sister showed up in his custody after his older brother committed suicide, unable to cope with the grief. Dex didn't look very pleased at the death of every adult in his family, he seemed strangely saddened by it, despite the fact that they'd cast him out so completely. Eric didn't think about it too much, he was better off, justice had been served and his Vengeance was satisfied. 

Then Shitty's Grandparents came down with an illness that brought them to the brink of death, no doctors could help them, there was no medical reason that explained their symptoms. They recovered as abruptly as they wasted and Shitty spoke in surprise and joy of how his grandparents had suddenly become much kinder, generous, tolerant people. He leaned over to Jack and said in tones of awe "brah, they were talking about how they'd seen the writing on the wall and they were fucking confronted or some shit." Eric had made a quip about "mene, mene, tekal, upharsin" (it was where he'd gotten the idea after all.) Shitty's grandparents had seen the writing on the wall - it was blood red and explicitly spelled out what would happen to them if they didn't change.

Then Ollie's Uncle turned himself into the police, he muttered that he would much prefer human justice, but the officers who booked him thought that sentiment faded fast. He did what they usually did, cowards the lot of them, he hung himself in his prison cell. The scratches, gouges and cuts all over his body had clearly been self-inflicted, a form of self-flagellation the coroner thought. 

Then Jack's commentators suffered a series of accidents - broken bones, illness, deaths of pets, fires, and theft, among others - until they all collectively and independently decided that perhaps an honest evaluation of players skills would be prudent. It wasn't that they were superstitious, exactly, it was just a feeling.

When Eric was twenty-one he visited Georgia after graduating. He told his Moomaw he was moving to Providence but it barely registered. There was a crackle of power surrounding him. The very air seemed crisper when he moved through it, where he touched her arm it stayed cold, and things he wanted shifted imperceptibly closer towards him. His smile was a touch too wide, his teeth a touch too sharp, and when she looked at her grandson out of the corner of her eye, there was a bloody mark on his right hand.  _Cain's Mark_ she thought, as her heart sank to her feet.

Fireworks went off in the sky and she watched as Eric shifted closer to Jack, lifted his head up to look, then laughed bright and clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Kent came very close to dying a grizzly death. The Author is as relieved as he is that he escaped this fate.  
> Title from 'Goblin Market' by Christina Rossetti


End file.
